Saturday, March 22, 2008

Goodbye baby years - for now

Our daughter's third birthday party went well yesterday. She had lots of fun and was quite chuffed with her Blues Clues cake. One Mum commented at least with one child I only have one lot of birthday parties to worry about but to be honest I love organising my daughter's birthday parties and would cherish planning more than one a year. I've still a lot to learn around making cakes but am enjoying upping the ante slightly every year. (admittedly I had the help of my husband and sister-in-law this year.)

Today our visitors left. Our daughter wasn't as sad as we thought she might be since she had the best week with her cousin. I really enjoyed having another child in the house and it's certainly a lot quieter round here now we're back to our one-child family. In a way I feel as though I saw a lot less of our daughter this week as she was so busy hanging out with her cousin.

This week has shown me that a Mum-of-two (MOT) has quite a different relationship with her kids than a Mum-of-one. (MOO). As a partial MOT I felt as though I was in more of a supervisory role whereas as a MOO I am very often my daughter's playmate as well as guardian. I enjoyed buzzing around in the background as a MOT and keeping two littlies stimulated and happy. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy knowing the two little girls were
content. I loved the challenge of keeping them entertained and playing well together. I didn't have to change activities as frequently as my daughter's attention span was longer with an older child to imitate and play alongside. Although I interacted with the two girls a lot, they certainly were able to play together for quite large chunks of time, just coming to me for attention when desired.

As a MOO I often feel like I'm not enough for my daughter and have to work hard at keeping the day interesting and varied. But as a MOO I feel closer in some respects to my daughter and I did miss the intensity of our relationship this week. I really feel like I'm her everything and there is some pressure to keep things fresh and exciting. As a MOT the pressure was taken off considerably, and our day-to-day outings became a lot more interesting with another child in the picture.

At work today three lots of babies came in including twins. The baby sightings really pulled at my heart-strings as I am feeling some grief around saying goodbye to the baby years now our daughter is three.

I'm trying to be optimistic but I'm day 24 in my cycle and my temperature is low, indicating ovulation probably hasn't occurred and a pregnancy very unlikely. For a couple of days I was starting to have faith that maybe, just maybe I could conceive again. But today I'm feeling like my baby dreams are quite out of reach. I don't want to go there just yet about the Clomid failing. I find taking this all One Day At A Time is the only way to go. Getting all depressed and hopeless won't help the outcome. All I can do is try my best to stay in the present and believe that God has it all worked out for me.

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